Making my Mystery Block of the Month: July 2025

You’ll have seen that I plan to complete Sherri’s mystery block a month quilt and in my last post I shared the test blocks which I made into my ninth charity quilt, today I’m sharing the centre block I made for my own quilt.

I’m still behind where I thought I would be on this, but - life - and I’m ok with that.

This month’s block is a churn dash, and it’s my first. There were definitely some lessons in the four test blocks I shared yesterday. I much prefer the corner triangles to be dark, and for the central square to be light, and so I kept that in mind when selecting the fabrics.

It’s not a ‘star’ month so I had some freedom to choose which colours I wanted to use this month, and the rules by the way are ones that I’ve set myself to bring some more uniformity to my finished quilt - not that I know what that will look like at this point!

But anyway. I went with green.

When I’m sewing these blocks I’m constantly checking the layout, and which of the green borders I should use - as well as which sides they need to be on. That hand drawn, scribbled plan has been so, so useful for the latter.

I didn’t quite get the motif in the centre spot on, but I think that was possibly down to my cutting rather than my sewing. And in the scheme of the whole quilt, I’m not sure it’ll be noticeable.

But with the borders added, the photos taken and now the blog post shared this one is hanging in my craft room along with the six blocks that have come before.

I’m getting quite used to seeing them hanging on my bookcase, hopefully once all the blocks are made and sewn together I’ll get used to seeing it on a bed instead. Still a while to go yet, and I’m saving sharing the ‘quick peek at all the blocks together’ for a month or two more yet.

Next month it’s back to stars, so I know I’ll be using navy blue fabrics. I’m not sure yet though if I’ll need to add in some other colours to make the design work, so I’ll leave it there for now.

Birthday bunting, a year on

Last summer we celebrated my dad’s 90th birthday and to mark the occasion I made some bunting. I’d printed the individual flags much earlier in the year at the Indian Block Printing course at our local library. Even then I was clear that a traditional ‘happy birthday’ banner was a lot of work - and would need a fair amount of space to hang, and I wanted something smaller.

In the end I settled on five flags, spelling I am 90 - and both the embroidery and assembly were finished way ahead of our family celebration, which was a relief - and almost felt like it was planned.

Which of course it was, but isn’t it great when a plan comes together?

Earlier this summer dad had another birthday, and so I thought I better provide an update, but without access to the same Indian blocks it would have to be different, so I decided to make it very different.

I’d picked up a large bag of buttons at my Sewing Group’s stash sale (along with the Vogue pictures, which are currently being framed) and more amazingly was able to remember where I put them and so lay my hands on them easily.

I’d drawn a 1 on a plain piece of fabric, and marked out the edges of the triangle which would form the bunting, and then played around with how the buttons would fit into the figure.

And once I was happy with that, I took a picture to remind myself of what I’d settled on, and set about sewing them on pretty much in the same position. It wasn’t exactly the same, but it was very close.

The last button - the tiny white one at the bottom right - didn’t seem to fit where I’d had it, as no doubt other buttons had moved slightly, and I toyed with the idea of leaving it off altogether. But in the end I added it close to where it should have been in my plan.

To hem and finish off the bunting I used a navy thread with a fancy stitch on my sewing machine - they look like Christmas lights to me, or ice creams in cones if you look at them the other way up.

Anyway, job done.

And that odd little button, well - it seems it was supposed to be there. Dad, who was half expecting an update to his birthday banner asked if I’d included that number of buttons on purpose. I hadn’t, but it turns out the number of buttons I’d used was the same number as dad’s birth date. I almost wish I’d thought of doing that myself, but seems that fate managed that all by itself.

How fortuitously weird, huh?

Making my Mystery Block of the Month: June 2025

You’ll have seen that I plan to complete Sherri’s mystery block a month quilt and in my last post I shared the test blocks which I made into my eighth charity quilt, today I’m sharing the centre block I made for my own quilt.

And yes, this is June’s block in August - I’m still catching up with myself and a more relaxed blogging approach this month is also contributing. But that’s life, hey.

We’re also back on the stars, this month’s is a Happy Friendship Star and the star also means we’re back on the navy blue fabrics, which I’m using for alternate blocks.

Learning from my test blocks

The purpose of my ‘stretch project’ is to up my skills, and this month that clearly also includes reading all of the instructions. Somehow I missed trimming my Half Square Triangles (HSTs) in the Raspberry Plus quilt which also probably explains why I wasn’t overly happy with my joins.

This time though I’ve learnt.

And my points were much better, but still not perfect - though good enough!

I spent more time than I should have working out which borders were required for this month’s block - and that was even after many looks at and double checking my handy drawing. But I got there, and the right borders are in the right place.

It’s turned out ok, hasn’t it?

I even spent some time ‘fussy cutting’ the centre square to get the pattern centred, and I think that was definitely worth the time it took. So that’s six months in on this mystery block quilt, six months of blocks left - and then there’s the assembling. I think it’s going to look really special, but there’s a while to go yet!